Calm Down Steps Sequence Cue Cards and Poster

About this resource

A fixed four-step calm-down procedure, not another bank of strategies to pick from. Most calm-down sets on the shelf are either a choice board (pick any one of many strategies) or a set of named breathing techniques; this file is the walk-through order that comes BEFORE and AROUND either one — notice the feeling, slow the breathing, try one calming choice, then check in — with its own poster, board, log, weekly roll-up and phrase bank behind it.

The Poster And Cards

• The poster: all four steps on one page, for teaching and for the wall — Notice, Breathe, Strategy, Check In, each with a one-line description of what the step means
• The cards (4, printed as two full sets) — the same four steps, cut apart so one of each can move onto the board, with a spare set in reserve

Every picture is a concrete object, not an abstract idea — a pair of eyes, a seated figure, a toolbox, a speech balloon — printed with its word underneath on every card. This is a single fixed four-step sequence, not a bank of interchangeable strategies, so the set is four steps rather than a padded word list; every step is used in the same order every time. Cards are 2 inches square.

The Board And The Strategy Menu

• Calm-Down Steps Board — four slots, Notice through Check In, in order, each with a line to mark whether the step needed help.
• Strategy-menu page — this file does not supply a specific calming choice at Step 3. Instead it gives your team a blank table to record which choices belong in one student's own toolbox, and names two companion files in this collection built as ready-made picture banks for that step, so you are never stuck re-inventing Step 3 from scratch.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the board's slots, the log, the roll-up, the strategy menu, the family page, the hand-off page and the blank cue cards, or print and use a pen. The poster and card pages print on cardstock or plain paper; the cards cut along dashed lines. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document.

It is a way to show a fixed four-step calm-down order in pictures and keep a record of when it was used. It is not a behavior plan, a therapy technique, a clinical finding or a program of any kind, and it promises no outcome. It never names which feeling a student must be having, and it never claims any one strategy at Step 3 works for every student. It carries no prompt hierarchy, fading schedule or mastery rule; how it is used with a student, and for how long, is what your team's plan says. The goal line and the criterion field are blanks for your district's own wording and your team's own number. The log counts one thing per step: whether help was needed.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals teaching a concrete, repeatable calm-down order to students who need one, case managers who need that use to show up as data, and the families who get the home page sent home.

More In The Collection

This is one of several sets in the Visual Supports Collection, alongside Calm-Down Choice Cards for Special Education | Self-Regulation Visual Supports, Breathing Exercise Visual Cards for Calm-Down Corner Editable | Visual Supports and Stop-Think-Act Impulse Control Cards and Log | Special Education Visual Supports; more picture-card sets are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same cards-plus-data shape.

Pictures (color pages): Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0. Pictures (ink-saver pages): Fluent Emoji, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, MIT License.